


Over Time. (Covered in the colours)

by ftwnhgn



Category: Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fluff and Humor, Getting Together, M/M, Other, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, newsbians and sprace are background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-11 11:22:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11147397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ftwnhgn/pseuds/ftwnhgn
Summary: His stain – or line, rather – is not only under his elbow, but winds up right around it and up to his shoulder. It’s weird, because it can’t be related to any real touch, so he gave up rather early on finding out who his soulmate is. It’s just too uncommon for any human and he stopped bothering with the sleepless nights caused by it once he turned nineteen. He had enough of his youth, of his hopeless thoughts about who it might be, who’d take up the challenge of being the person who leaves these lines on his arm. On his skin. Who will turn these lines into shades of colours.A soulmate AU where you have a black stain where your soulmate is supposed to touch you for the first time and it turns to millions of colours once they do.





	Over Time. (Covered in the colours)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, hello, hello. Another unnecessary soulmate Au that nobody asked for but I wrote anyway. I actually wanted to turn this into something bigger but college is hardcore kicking my ass these weeks, so here we go!
> 
> Totally unbeta'd and I'm no native speaker, so any error you'll find is something I'm deeply sorry for but they're yours now.
> 
> Title: Halsey - Colours, Halsey - Hopeless

_"I hope, hopeless changes over time."  
\- Halsey_

 

_*_

 

David had a black line right under his left elbow since his fifteenth birthday. His mother was delighted when he came downstairs in just his t-shirt and sweatpants and he was way too tired and disorientated to know why she had something he would still to this day describe as a stroke.

It was at the breakfast table that day, that she told him all about soulmates. How you will randomly get a mark or a pattern or a stain on the part of your body they will touch first – and sometimes even where they touch you mostly after that – and how it will turn colourful once they touch you. She shows him her own stain on the back of her left upper arm, where his father held her to save her from falling into a puddle. She didn’t know he was her soulmate until a week later when she saw the red and orange colours where her black stain used to be.

His stain – or line, rather – is not only under his elbow, but winds up right around it and up to his shoulder. It’s weird, because it can’t be related to any real touch, so he gave up rather early on finding out who his soulmate is. It’s just too uncommon for any human and he stopped bothering with the sleepless nights caused by it once he turned nineteen. He had enough of his youth, of his hopeless thoughts about who it might be, who’d take up the challenge of being the person who leaves these lines on his arm. On his skin. Who will turn these lines into shades of colours.

Nevertheless, he’s always been supportive of his friends, who found their soulmates pretty much in high school or their first college years. The best example for that was Spot, who was David’s seatmate in most of his classes since middle school, and whose soulmate turned out to be the guy he had an unspoken crush on since he saw him the first time in their history class. They got into a fight in the middle of the classroom once and the guy tackled Spot away from him and right after he did there were green and teal colours spreading over Spot’s skin, visible for everyone due to the sleeveless shirt Spot was wearing. The kid’s name was Race and after a week of detention they were inseparable. (Race had messy blotches of crimson red all over his shoulders from this day on.)

There have been other friends as well. Like Specs, whose black finger-print around his wrist turned light-green after a house party. Or Elmer, whose black stain on his neck was violet once he made it back to New York after their Christmas break in their senior year. Hell, even his own sister. She came back home one weekend from her first year out of college with peach-coloured traces on her knuckles. Her name was Katherine and they brushed against each other when Sarah boarded a train the same time as her.

And then there’s David.

Who doesn’t even care about anyone that touches him anymore. Who dates despite the negative notion it has in society and who’s the eligible bachelor once his friends get into the age for marriage. House parties, wedding receptions and Christmas dinners with no one beside him. They all eye him like he’s got some incurable sickness, but he brushes any questions off. He became perfect at this. And, hey, after enough years and mean glances, no one touches his mark anymore, no matter how curious they are.

It’s a relief, somehow, to not be on guard every day at any time. How bitter it makes him appear.

The only thing he still has trouble with are the worried and sad glances of his mother, whenever he is home. He doesn’t forget the conversation they had on his fifteenth birthday and he doesn’t forget every time her face falls when she asks him and he has no news to report for her. She’s proud of him, sure, for graduating on top of his classes through high school and college and for finding a job at a newspaper he loves, for climbing his way up until he’s in the position of head editor. Yes, she’s proud of him, but he can’t help but feel the sting whenever she looks at him when she thinks he’s not paying attention.

 

*

 

“It would be fun! You know, no one is forcing you, but I’m sure it would be fun,” Sarah tells him, the excited glee in her eyes still there when she clutches his arm.

David doesn’t like the grip she has on his biceps, but he’s biting the notion to comment on it away. It will only upset her and he hates upsetting his sister. Plus, their whole group of friends is sitting around them and he hates causing a scene. And his friends turn _everything_ into a scene.

Especially Race. Race is _great_ at that.

“You heard the lady, Dave. It’d be fun!” Race then retorts, cigarette dangling at the edge of his mouth and his amused grin almost looks mean. He has too much pleasure with making David do things David doesn’t want to. Always had. “Put yourself out there, man!” he adds on, leaning across the small table while Spot does nothing in restraining him.

These days, David can’t even seem to count on his longest and dearest friend. _Damn_ soulmates.

David gives Race a glare that makes him back off at least half an arms-length and extracts himself from his sister’s hand.  “I’m not ‘putting myself out there’, Race. I’m not twenty anymore and I’m fairly certain that people my age don’t do that anymore,” he explains and can visibly feel how his friends deflate around him.

“Yeah, they ain’t, cause they already have a mate, y’know,” Race answers sourly, which earns him a slap to the back of his head from Spot.

 _Good_ , David thinks.

“I don’t know if any of you noticed, but I am not searching for them. If you would have paid attention to me the last – oh I don’t know, just eleven years, you would have known,” David says and crosses his arms in front of his chest in defence. He hates talking about the soulmate thing with them. He hates it, right out _loathes_ it.

Spot gives him that look that says ‘ _I’m the only one who’s been here for eleven years and I’m not a nosy fuck like my husband or the rest of them_ ’ without saying a word and David just nods at him.

“We ain’t wanna hurt you, Dave,” Specs quips up. “We just want you to be happy, you know. We’re your friends, after all,” he reminds David.

David closes his eyes and sighs in defeat. Now he’s made them upset. This is going fantastic again. “ _I know_ , Specs. But you know I don’t like to talk about it.”

“Well,” Race starts again because he can never shut up. And he loves to needle David with it and David already knows what’s coming along with the headache forming behind his forehead when he sees the grin on Race’s face. “If ya would try what Sarah mentioned, maybe we’d back off for once.”

Smartass.

“You’d _never_ back off, Race,” David deadpans.

Race’s grin gets even wider. “You got me there,” he says in the most delighted tone. “But maybe ya’ll get the rest of us off your back.”

That… doesn’t sound so bad, if David is honest. Maybe, if he’d agree to what Sarah proposed and tells them afterwards how it went, they will leave him alone for a at least a few weeks. It’s the least he can hope for to keep his sanity. It’s the least they would offer him and he’s way too exhausted to argue with Sarah _and_ Race on top of upsetting Specs.

They all look at him in anticipation.

He sighs. “Fine. Call Katherine.”

They all cheer like he just told them he’d won the lotto and would share with them. David’s not as sure of his decision though.

 

*

 

“Just go inside. He won’t bite!” Katherine laughs over the phone.

It’s been two weeks since David agreed to Sarah’s idea and now that he’s standing outside the art studio he’s not sure he has the guts to follow through with this.

“Well, one can never know. Would it be so bad if-“

“Yes, yes it would be,” Katherine cuts him off and he can practically hear her eye-roll. “You promised Sarah this and I’m not letting you break this promise. And you promised Race as well.”

“I never promised Race anything,” David shakes his head and stares at the nameplate next to the doorbell. He really doesn’t want to. “ _Oh_ , he opened a betting pool, didn’t he?”

Katherine is ominously quiet on the other end of the line.

“I knew it,” David grumbles.

“Just get it over with, David,” Katherine says.

“I’m not sure if I can, Kath.”

“ _David_. The next time you call me, you’ve better been inside of that studio,” she chirps and hangs up.

So, now it’s just him and the art studio and Sarah’s stupid idea. No other way around. He knows if he would not do it and lie to Sarah, she’d know immediately and Katherine would be after his head. He also knows that Spot would be out of a lot of money as well – Spot, the saint of a friend he is, has the habit of betting in David’s favour all the time, which made him lose too much money to Race in the past. Thankfully for them, it now stays in one household.

Race wouldn’t get that smug look off his face for _weeks_ , minimum.

It’s that thought that makes him ring the door-bell like there’s no tomorrow.

David doesn’t even have time to check his appearance in the glass of the front door because then a young man – the one Katherine and Sarah mentioned, the owner of the art studio - opens the door for him.

“Hi there, you must be David? Kath called ahead to tell me you’d be early,” he greets David.

He looks. Amazing, to say the least. Dark hair and a broad smile, tanned skin and expressive eyes. His clothes are covered in paint. but David can still see how tight his jeans are and how nice the blue shirt he’s wearing is stretching over his shoulders.

“Hey, man, eyes up here!” The man laughs and David feels heat creeping up his neck and into his cheeks. _Shit_.

“Yeah, uhm yeah, well,” David stutters. _Fantastic_. This is going _fantastic_. “I am. David. I think.”

“You think? You ain’t so sure about that? Your mother gave you no name or what?” The guy teases and David is sure he turns even redder than before.

“Uh, no, no. I am. My name’s David. I’m sure,” he tries to explain.

The guy waves him off, sunny smile unwavering on his face. “Okay, David-I’m-Sure. I’m Jack Kelly, if Katherine didn’t tell ya already. And I’d shake your hand but mine are full of paint and I don’t wanna ruin yours because they are a bitch to wash off,” he steps away from the door and turns around, calling over his shoulder, “Come inside, throw your jacket somewhere and if ya wanna start right away just take your sweater off and sit down on the stool in front of that nice white wall. I’ll be right back.”

Jack Kelly leaves him alone in the doorway of the spacey studio and while he’s off through a door on the other side of the room, doing god knows what, David swallows down the nerves he has and looks around. The interior of the room is pretty spare and open. White walls, a stool in the centre on a white sheet and behind it several portrays and paintings leaning against the wall. There are empty canvases lined up next to an easel and what seems to be a former-trolley-turned-supply closet for Jack’s paintbrushes and paints as well as crumbled up paper balls and what seem to be packed-up sandwiches from what Davey can make out.

The whole place is like an extension of the guy Katherine and Sarah told him about ( _“artistic, a bit messy, but naturally open and easy to get along with! You’ll love him right away, Davey!"_ ) and he’s not so sure anymore if this really is a portray session for their mother’s birthday or a blind date. His suspicion tells him it’s the latter and the instant attraction he feels for Jack Kelly tells him the same.

He’s _so_ fucked.

David decides it’s best to take his clothes off before Jack is back, because there’s no way he wouldn’t embarrass himself in front of him, so he makes quick due with his coat and his sweater, folding them up and putting them and his backpack onto the ground next to the front door. Only clad in a t-shirt makes him feel weirdly stripped and also kind of uncomfortable because now Jack – a stranger, sort of – can see his soulmate mark right away and how it’s as black as tar and well, David is not ready for the questions and the sorry looks.

“Relax. You’s as stiff as a board,” Jack shouts from the other end of the room and David snaps up from where he stared down at himself. “Don’t know what Kath spilled on ya, but as I told ya, just sit down on that nice wooden stool right in front of me. All I’m gonna do today are outlines and the most basic stuff. If ya want a more detailed drawing for ya mother, just call back and we schedule another appointment, but as of the current state, that’s about it. I message ya when I’m done and you can pick up the finished product right here from me. Or, when I ain’t here, from Crutchie.”

“Crutchie?” David asks as he’s trying to make himself comfortable with sitting on the stool. Jack is standing next to his easel, where a canvas is now propped on, and nods.

“Crutchie. Usually answers the phone. Short, blond guy. Sweet as jam. You’d like him. It’s kinda impossible not to,” Jack explains, pencil between his teeth.

He’s studying David and David watches how Jack is studying him. It makes him feel a bit hot and a like an insect under a microscope. Like he’s getting seized up. There’s no need for him to impress Jack, but he wants to. Somehow. It’s silly, really, but he can’t help but sit up a bit straighter when Jack’s eyes fly over his body.

“Just like that. I actually wanted to ask ya, if ya can sit up a bit,” Jack murmurs, already far away, outlining David’s upper body in his mind, how his shoulders curve and how he’ll draw the edge of his nose and the sharpness of his jaw. How he wants to catch the way the ceiling lights reflect in David’s brown eyes.

“So, Davey, tell me something about yourself,” Jack asks as he puts his pencil onto the canvas, starting with careful and faint lines. Clients seem to relax more when they can talk and from the coiled-up tension in David’s body Jack thinks that’s what the guy needs.

David swallows around the lump in his throat, not able to refrain his fingers to intertwine with each other – a horrible habit of his whenever he’s uneasy or nervous. Or anxious. Or all of the mentioned emotions. Right now he certainly feels all of them at once.

“I work as an editor for a newspaper,” David begins, quietly. “I have a sister, Sarah, as you probably know when you’re friends with Katherine, and a brother called Les. I’m the middle child and I’m twenty-six. I live in Brooklyn because my best friend’s from there. Uhm, I don’t know, I like animals and I like to read? I meet up with my friends for brunch or dinner once a week. I also don’t like to start every sentence with I.”

Jack chuckles to himself as he listens to David’s rambling and David can hear it. He’s not sure if he should take it as a compliment or as an insult, so he just acts like he hasn’t heard it. He has the distinct feeling that Jack hasn’t planned on being audible.

“Kath said you’re a big talker,” he says, his eyes flicking between his canvas and David. “And that you have a sister. Right now, only one of the two is true.”

David bites down on his lip worryingly and shrugs. “I’m not really good with strangers,” he explains. “Most times, people think I’m rude or patronizing when they meet me, so I don’t really try.”

“Well, I thought you’re pretty good-looking,” Jack admits.

The t-shirt probably doesn’t do a good job with hiding the blush that’s spreading up from David’s neck to his face and by now he’s sure he must be beet read because Jack is not looking at his canvas anymore but at him. Straight at David and nowhere else. It’s the most attention David’s gotten by anyone in years.

“I’m so red right now,” David states, matter of fact, to defuse the awkwardness of the situation.

“Nah,” Jack answers and puts his pencil behind his ear. David’s eyes follow the movement. His hands are still covered in paint and his dark hair looks soft. “You seem pretty pale to me.”

He steps away from his easel and up to David, not taking his eyes off of him, off his face in particular and after a few steps he’s right up in David’s personal space and _still looking at him_. There’s a smirk on his lips and David has no doubt that whatever witty thing Jack will say won’t help to decrease the tension between them since Jack opened that door.

It must be mere seconds in which neither of them says anything and David studies the lines on Jack’s face – they must be around the same age, Jack seems a bit older than him despite his youthful essence – and the unique colour of his eyes and the tan of his skin. He looks even better from up close, David realizes.

“You’re not red here,” Jack says without taking his eyes away from David’s and David can feel the pad of Jack’s finger on his arm, drawing a pattern on there while his smirk turns into a grin. “And also not here.” His finger moves away from David’s arm and is now a full hand on David’s other arm, circling around his biceps in a gentler way than Sarah usually has.

David shivers unintentionally as the tête-à-tête between Jack’s calloused and paint-stained palm and his skin, goosebumps spreading over his whole arm and upper body.

 _God_ , it seems _so_ warm in the room. That wasn’t the case before, wasn’t it?

David can’t remember.

“And look,” Jack murmurs as his hand trails up, his smirk growing into a grin before he continues. “You’re nearly back to normal again in the face too. Less fire extinguisher and more normal person.”

David wants to glare at him for breaking the moment they just shared, but instead of saying a smart comeback, he loses his balance on the stool and crashes right into Jack, who falls backwards onto the ground with him, the noise of them hitting the floor insanely loud in the quietness of the studio.

“That was,” David says between catching his breath, “not what I intentioned.”

Jack, still lying under him, laughs. A loud and cheerful noise. “Oh, it ain’t? I thought that’s how you get every guy to take you out on a date.”

The tension that was between them only minutes ago seems to be miles away since David has been his most inelegant and clumsy self and Jack’s comment is enough to make him shake with laughter just after he scrambled off of Jack and back onto his feet. It’s so unexpected but nice to hear someone tease him about dating because around David there’s usually no dating anymore and no compliments thrown his way, most of all not the cheeky sort like Jack’s.

But cheeky is right up David’s alley, especially when it comes from someone like Jack.

“If ya done with laughing ya ass off, would ya help-“ Jack begins, but stops dead in his tracks.

When David can control himself again and looks at Jack, the other man looks like a deer caught in headlights. And David, David has the unsettling realization that he knows what this means. He’s seen the look before.

“ _Oh, no_ ,” Jack huffs out and scrambles to his feet and before David can draw his arm away – because he knows what’s coming for him, just another person being _weird_ and _touchy_ about his mark – Jack catches him at his wrist in a grip that competes with Sarah’s.

“Jack, please-“ David begins but Jack shuts him up with a movement of his free hand. David closes his eyes in surrender.

“I couldn’t even see it!” Jack exclaims in a whine as he turns David’s arm in his hand. He lets go of David’s wrist, who’s to done to do anything about whatever possessed Jack – somehow still more or a less _a stranger_ – and his hands move up David’s arm until David can feel them trace his mark.

David can hear Jack taking a giddy exhale and, honestly, he’s never heard someone as excited as Jack when being confronted with David’s weird-ass mark.

“You gotta have a look at that, Davey! Davey!”

And from where has _that_ nickname suddenly come from?

“Look!” Jack repeats again, nearly shouting into David’s ear.

“Okay, okay! Fine!” David surrenders. “I look. Relax!”

David opens his eyes and the first thing he sees is Jack’s face, which looks more animated and happy than David has seen it in the short time he spent with Jack in here. And that must count for _something_ because Jack is a very expressive person, it was the first thing David gathered about him. He then follows Jack’s eyes, that are fixed on his arm.

He’s supposed to find the black lines he’s seen for years now, but instead there’s a vibrant blue line around his elbow and when he turns his face more around to see his mark, he can see how the blue line turns into a dusty sky-blue like Sarah’s mark but it fades into a yellow around his biceps up to the point where it ends in a vibrant and sunny yellow under the sleeve of his shirt.

“David,” Jack whispers and David looks up from his arm to Jack again.

Jack.

 _His soulmate_ , Jack. After all.

“It’s you,” David says, breathless.

 

*

 

David wakes up to soft humming sounds and the annoying light of a summer morning bursting into his bedroom. He grumbles into his pillow and turns away and more into the sheets despite how warm it is in the room. But he never could sleep without bundled up into his duvet, not even when it's the middle of June, and now all David can think about is how it’s already June and how he can’t sleep without his duvet and now falling asleep again is a hopeless matter, so he opens his eyes.

The humming noise isn’t some weird bird or insect, but the AC blasting right above his bed and as his eyes adjust to the sunlight, he can see the stripes of Jack’s underwear right in front of him.

“Oh, you’s awake?” Jack says, deductive skills not failing him on that bright Friday morning as David grumbles some more and gives the AC a dirty look.

“Hey, you wanted the AC, so don’t be pissed about it,” Jack defends. “We’re not having this conversation when we already had it since we got the thing installed two years ago, Dave.”

David bunches the sheets down to his waist and pokes Jack’s torso. “I heard you,” he answers.

“Of course you did, baby,” Jack nods, the thick frames of his glasses slipping down his nose a bit. “Won’t stop ya from giving me shit from today on till September for installing the damn thing for ya.”

“I know why I love you,” David mumbles and moves up the bed until his head is right next to Jack’s shoulder. From this position, he can admire his fiancé’s naked chest and legs perfectly, just like he can look at the different shades of violet on his stomach and his side and the way they seamlessly turn into a vibrant pink that curls around his hipbone and disappears into his underwear, just to appear again as blotches of blue down his left leg. The violet turns into lavender and warmer red tones up his chest and onto his shoulder until it ends in a faint yellow that matches the colour of David’s mark.

When David first saw the extent of Jack’s mark he apologized for the mess he made of Jack’s perfect skin. It was three weeks after their first meeting and all Jack did was kiss him to shut him up and mumble against his lips how much he loved to see David like that on his skin. It was the first and last time David ever apologized for crashing into Jack like the train wreck he is. At least it made a great story at the dinner table when Jack met David’s family officially for the first time.

“Because I know you like no one else does?” Jack proposes and nudges David’s shoulder with his own.

“No,” David answers irritated. “Because I can complain around you and you won’t leave me.”

David can feel how Jack’s laugh erupts his body before he can hear it and it makes him grin against his shoulder good-naturedly.

“You’re mean, ya know that?” Jack asks amused.

“Yeah, I do,” David answers.

Jack picks up the book he’s been reading – some young adult novel about a dystopian fantasy if David remembers correctly – and David reads along with him over his shoulder while Jack’s hand is in his hair and his own is around Jack’s side, violet and pink peeking out beneath his fingers.

“Love you too, by the way,” Jack whispers into his ear.

David smiles and kisses Jack’s shoulder, only catching a glimpse of the yellow of his own mark before he pays attention to the book again.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading this, honestly. leave a comment if you want! they make me super happy and give my poor soul life, not to be dramatic or anything. or chat with me on tumblr (andreinbolkonsky) or twitter (xbigboysdontcry) where I only talk about Newsies Live and nothing else anymore (except Bandstand)
> 
> friendly reminder: you are loved, you are enough and you will achieve great things. you are right just the way you are, a living and breathing thing. keep going. take care.


End file.
